On auto racing.

Cup title, rookie honor within Hamlin's reach

Even without the back-flips, rookie Denny Hamlin just might have more impact on this year's Chase for the Cup than rookie Carl Edwards had on last year's.

And it could be a lot more. It could be monumental.

Edwards, you will recall, breezed free and easy into last year's playoffs, declaring his overriding goal was to have fun and just see where he wound up.

He came very, very close to winning it all, finishing in a tie for second with teammate Greg Biffle in the points, just 35 back of champion Tony Stewart.

But Hamlin, 25, a more subdued personality, knows he has potential he calls "really overwhelming."

He could become the first NASCAR driver to win rookie of the year honors and the overall championship in the same season.

In 1979 the brash young Dale Earnhardt was rookie of the year, but finished seventh in points. In 1980 Earnhardt won the first of his seven season championships. Nobody has equaled his accomplishment in back-to-back years.

Stewart came closer than anyone to what Hamlin can achieve, finishing fourth in points when he was top rookie in 1999. But it wasn't really that close. Stewart finished a whopping 488 points out of first, and it took him three more seasons to win his first championship in 2002.

Hamlin last year ran only the final seven races for Joe Gibbs Racing, though he was hinting at stardom with four top-10 finishes and a pole. So this year he qualified as a rookie.

Out of the box this season, Hamlin wowed NASCAR's fandom, winning the Bud Shootout bonus race at Daytona to open Speedweeks. He did it by staying out front of the bump-drafting slugfest.

His two points wins, both at Pocono, were dominant. The first one, in June, came on a track he never had seen before arriving to practice. He had familiarized himself with Pocono's triangular layout by playing a video game.

And Saturday night at his home track (he's from the Richmond suburb of Chesterfield, Va.), Hamlin nursed home a car running on only seven cylinders and earned himself the fifth-place berth in the Chase, 437 points behind leader Matt Kenseth.

Hamlin's senior teammate, Stewart, plummeted unexpectedly out of the top 10, and the Chase, at Richmond. But that's one of several reasons Hamlin has a realistic shot at the title.

Stewart, without his own playoff pressure, can step up the coaching he has done with Hamlin all season.

"He usually finds a way to talk to me before I get in the car, makes sure he's the last thing that gets in my mind," Hamlin said.

Hamlin already is savvy enough to realize that being the solo representative of his team is by no means a disadvantage to, say, the trio from Hendrick Motorsports (Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch) or the duos from Roush Racing (Kenseth and Mark Martin) and Richard Childress Racing (Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton).

"We can use our teammates [Stewart and J.J. Yeley] to kind of--not necessarily [test] experiment for us, but kind of," Hamlin said. "They don't have much to lose, so they can maybe try some things for us, maybe some two-tire stops early in a race [to test the tactic at that point] for us so we don't have to do it and risk losing track position.

"With those guys who have teammates in the Chase, they have to be on their guard at all times. . . . They have to look out for themselves."